Language

Oral Communication

The Necessity for Oral Communication

We're going to be discussing a very important topic today: oral communication. Most people know what oral communication is, but they do not understand how important it is to develop oral communication skills in students. When we talk about having good oral communication skills what do we mean? Well, it has to do with the degree of how well you can get meaning across to other people through the use of your voice. I consider myself to have good oral communication skills and I actually notice a correlation between my oral communication skills and how I write. I don't believe it affects the grammar and spelling of my writing but it definitely has an effect on how fast I can write and makes my writing more engaging.

A test you can do is to try and write a paragraph about something opinionated, and as you write that paragraph notice how the inner voice in your head is talking.

Does that inner voice sound like you?

Is that inner voice loud?

Does it think of content you can write faster than you can write it?

Or is it slow?

Is it quiet?

Doing this test can tell you a lot about yourself. Now let's look at why oral communication is so important in the 21st century. To state the obvious oral communication gives us a massive array of tools to use when communicating with one another. It is the ULTIMATE way to communicate with other humans. You can express things like sarcasm, mood, and emotions all through the way you speak. It is at least twice as hard to do that through writing although many skilled writers can get close. A common form of communication in the 21st century is texting. Texting is a great tool to get quick information across, but many things can get misinterpreted over text. For instance, in the English language, there are various ways to agree with what someone said. Over text, this is mostly represented as "okay", "ok", "okk", "kk", "k" and the most feared "K". This does seem to be a generational thing but I know for the most part anyone in my generation and younger could be extremely offended by a text that just says "K". In our heads that is equivalent to someone orally yelling "okay" at you with a manor of passive aggressiveness and disgust. This is what makes the English language one of the hardest to learn and the most complex. The text message "K" is a generational cultural thing, my dad will text me just "K" all the time for convenience and I just have to know that he is not saying it as if he is angry. This concept applies to many people.

So now that you've seen why oral communication can be so important in regular conversational settings, let's apply it to the work field. There are so many students who can get 90-100% on all of their tests and assignments. But they struggle when it comes to group projects or anything that has to do with speaking. This can be so detrimental when they finish school and enter, as they say, "the real world". The student finishes their university degree in something like business and then finds that they can't start their own business because they can't speak to people properly. So they try to get a job in the corporate world and find that their interviews are awful because they sound like a robot and then get a job low on the ladder, that they could have got without their degree. This happens a lot and that is why you see so many people not achieving their dreams. However, this situation can be stopped before it even begins. All it takes is teachers facilitating oral communication in their students and getting them out of their "shell". Of course, this isn't all on the teacher, it has to do with parents as well. But if there are shy quiet students in your class, the teacher should be doing as much as they can to get them out of their "shell". The best way to do this is by slowly introducing assignments, activities and group work that require the students to come out of their "shell". Doing this at a slow pace is key because abruptly making quiet students do a lot at once can make the problem worse and embarrass them. Therefore, scaring them even more and associating speaking as a bad thing.

Now as good as it is to have oral communication skills there can be some pitfalls. Students need to learn how to use the power of free speech. Just a few examples of using oral communication in a bad way is by using it for hate speech or trying to sway other people into doing bad things. It can be a very powerful thing. An extreme example of this is how Hitler was able to sway people's opinions on many things by mostly using oral communication. A less extreme example of using oral communication in a bad way is by speaking too much and too often. There will usually always be that student in the classroom who talks and answers questions way too often. This causes the rest of the class to not be able to participate in the class and can be a serious problem. Therefore, you can see that there are two sides of the spectrum. Teachers have an important responsibility to promote oral communication in their students but must teach their students how to use their words responsibly.

Writing in the 21st Century

Alright, folks! This is the blog you've all been waiting for. We're going to be talking about the latest and greatest research on writing in the 21st century. Many argue, now that writing is done online and in print, we need to develop "new models of writing" and a "new curriculum" to support those models (Blake, 2019). Personally, I don't believe we need a whole new curriculum. But I do believe in the notion that we have to adapt our outdated 2006 language curriculum to meet the standards we have today... 2006 was fourteen years ago. When we look back briefly on the history of writing we see that in the 20th-century reading was the main focus for children, society was less focused on writing (Blake, 2019). This is because writing was seen as a way to give control to its users while reading was a way for children to read what adults had to say and obey them (Blake, 2019). If you look at it this way society has come a long way. You can even begin to wonder if this is why we have had such exponential growth in technology and evolution in the last couple of decades. Instead of focusing on purely writing and reading specific things adults tell you, we now focus on kids' creative writing... Or so we should. It makes sense why reading was such a heavy focus back in the day it was so adults could instill their values and obedience at a young age (Blake, 2019). In that type of society, there is no growth. This is something that goes beyond writing, you can see that the brightest ideas are coming from companies like Google. Google's main hiring process is to see how creative each candidate is. They put creativity as one of their most important qualities. Speaking of Google, in my opinion, there is something lacking from the curriculum that I believe should be an essential skill in both writing and math.

Proposition

Listen, I've done extensive theoretical and hands-on research into implementing technology into the classroom. All teachers have been focusing on so far is using technology as a teaching tool. Whereas we should be implementing technology into the curriculum by teaching how to use and do certain things. Computer programming/coding sounds very abstract to most people! That is because you never learn about it unless you make a very great effort to learn it yourself or take courses at university. Coding uses many skills from math and writing and can be implemented to solve problems in science, geography, and just about every other subject. However, if we focus on writing we can see that coding and writing are more similar than one would expect. In coding, you're writing paragraphs of carefully formatted words and numbers that all have meaning so that a computer can understand them (Atwood, Coding). While in everyday writing you're writing paragraphs of carefully chosen words so that a human can understand them. Coding involves proper grammar called syntax, spelling, structure, and so on and so forth. There are multiple languages you can code in, just like we have multiple languages as humans.

This correlation is best explained with an example:

names = ['raymond', 'rachel', 'matthew']
colors = ['red', 'green', 'blue', 'yellow']

n = min(len(names), len(colors))
print(n)

For a writing assignment, imagine having a student read this python code and convert/explain it in words. This is somewhat of a higher level code but any snippet of code can be explained.

Explanation:

In the first sentence, the word "names" is storing a list of names - raymond, rachel and matthew.

In the second sentence, the word "colors" is storing a list of colours - red, green, blue and yellow.

In the thirds sentence, the letter "n" is storing the result of the line of code it equals. To solve that we use the BEDMAS we learned in elementary school to determine the order of operations. We also must know that "min" means the minimum value of a set of numbers and "len" is the total amount of things in a list. So starting with the inner brackets (len(names), len(colors) we can determine that the length of "names" is 3 and the length of colors is "4". Then that sentence would look like
n = min(3, 4). To solve that we just take the "minimum/smallest" value of those two numbers, so "n" would equal "3".

In the fourth sentence, the computer is simply going to "print" out for us the answer we found already "3". When I say print I mean it's just going to show us that the answer is 3.

Continued

Now that code was written in a language called Python. Despite how intimidating it looked at first glance, that is something a student should be able to complete by the latest Grade 7. As all they need is prior knowledge of the order of operations and some problem-solving skills. However, that type is coding is pretty ugly to kids and they're more interested in the beautiful coding games and activities many educators have created over the years. A great example is the website Tynker.

On Tynker coding is fun and you get realtime results. A big aspect of it is how visually stimulating it is.

Writing and Social Media

I can't talk about everything on writing in this blog so I've decided I would focus on the technology side of things. Social media is an enormous aspect of students' and adults day to day lives. It incorporates everything from real-time news, politics, updates from friends, and many more aspects. The thing about social media is that it has doubled the amount that people write in a day! Through platforms like Facebook and Twitter, people are keeping society updated on their lives through... Writing! From what I've seen is that it cultivates precise writing through the word limit on the platform Twitter. This article I found on Yahoo also states its many other benefits!

Check them out:

- Grammar and spelling errors

- Writing too fast

- Using text language

- Lessons about sharing

- Encouraging creativity

- Expressing thoughts

(Social Media Effects, Yahoo!)

Citations

Atwood, Jeff. “Coding Horror.” Coding, https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-its-just-writing/.

“Social Media Effects on Student Writing Can Be Positive.” Yahoo!, Yahoo!, https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/social-media-effects-student-writing-positive-003059758.html.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Writing in the 21st Century.” National Council of Teachers of English, NCTE, 2009, http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf.

Reading Strand Blog Post

AUDIT OF TEACHING READING

Hi fellow teachers! Today I'm going to share with you what I believe are some of the best teaching strategies you can use with your students. We're going to be looking at this from the students' point of view as well as the teacher's point of view. Let me tell you, there is something beneficial about being a young and upcoming teacher in the 21st century. It puts me in an interesting position where I am able to recall what worked best for me and what worked best for my classmates back in elementary and high-school. You'll be able to see my take on this as well as other perspectives from my research. So please stick around until the end! :D

I would like to start this off with our current curriculum on the reading strand of literacy. This is important because this is what Teachers in Ontario must completely follow! After doing some research Canadian teachers have a lot to live up to as Canada has the HIGHEST OECD score in literacy in students aged 15 (OECD). That is important as Canada is compared to many other countries worldwide.

The reading strand consists of four expectations:

Students will:

1. read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning;

2. recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning;

3. use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read fluently;

4. reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading.

Side note: it's kind of funny when grammarly picks up an error in the grammar of the reading curriculum expectations. (Note: expectation 2 should have (an) before (understanding).

AHHH it bothers me that the curriculum is so vague. A teacher could technically teach those expectations in a few days if they wanted to. Just give the students an assignment per expectation and your good to go.

WELL no, that wouldn't work because even though the curriculum is vague, teachers are tasked with the unique task to teach students those expectations in great detail. Obviously, the curriculum goes into more detail about reading too but you know what I mean.

The Past
There were many great ways teachers would teach my classes reading skills. The way that I believe was the most beneficial was reading multi-level texts. Having to read books and poems was easily the most beneficial thing we did. The more we read the more subconsciously our brain was adapting to learn all the different types of sentence structures and grammar. If students are not challenged when they are reading then they will not progress. It was beautiful reading books that had such detail to them that you could picture the entire scene of what was going on in your head. Another great tool SOME teachers used was giving meaning to reading. When the teacher would let us pick our own book that was a huge benefit. Finally, the classic worksheets to give definition to sentence structure, grammar, and different writing terms were somewhat beneficial... Not like I remember many of the terms now. But implanting those terms subconsciously definitely made students aware of them when reading.

There were many practices that NEED to be avoided. In my opinion, heavily teaching terms that students will rarely ever use in the real world is not okay. Things like (allegory, alliteration, metonymy, motif) blablabla. If students are interested in terms like that show it to them once and then let them figure it out on their own. It's the 21st century, students as young as grade 3 know how to navigate the internet better than most adults. The best skill students can learn is to think for themselves. We don't need to baby them they can google things on their own time/go to a library. Another thing that honestly disgusts me and I believe this might even still apply today is some of the book choices forced by schools/teachers. I've heard this from MANY students in elementary & high schools in the GTA but can we stop giving our kids depressing, dark, and disturbing books based on murder, rape, dark, and dystopian societies. I've heard the argument, "Those are the only types of books with good and thoughtful literature." Examples of these books are The Chrysalids, Flowers in the Attic, and Holes. We need to give students better choices because in my opinion reading the books above was traumatizing at a young age.

The Future

I am a very progressive person and I believe that the field that should be the most cutting edge is teaching. How is society going to evolve and learn from past mistakes if we're teaching outdated information, and using old techniques? Teaching, especially in elementary school, is still largely based on memorizing clumps of information. Luckily, there has been a big shift to teaching students concepts rather than just raw memorization. However, this whole concept of memorization is what is fundamentally flawed with teaching. It humored me when I heard cell phones were banned in the classroom. In current society what do you do if you need to know something? You search for it on the internet. Rather than limiting students of a valuable resource and skill they use daily in their lives we should be integrating it into our teaching. Now I'm not saying we let everyone just use their phones carelessly as that could be very distracting for students. However, instead of having these big Chromebooks which took way to long to make it into the classroom. Students should have a school tablet that is not as big as say an iPad, but definitely bigger than a phone. Imagine the possibilities this could bring to reading and the classroom. The teacher could technically do a whole day of lessons and activities with these devices. In terms of reading and writing, it could save paper, mess, and sync with the teacher's master tablet. Students would get a pen with the tablet and be able to write with that. The only thing stopping this from happening is because our current system is so insanely slow. Laptops should have been in the classroom when I was in elementary school. The first modern laptop was made in 1982 and the first tablet was made in 2001. Although, the tablet wouldn't have made sense in the classroom until the Ipad was released in 2010. Now I don't mean to rant but this is important, the number of regulations and funding that need to happen is making our school system too slow!

Other Resources

Well, that was my aggressive take on reading and the school system. But sometimes you have to be aggressive for change to happen. Take Greta Thunberg, for example, we haven't seen such movement in climate change in years. Her reading and writing skills are magnificent by the way. I wonder why that is? Probably because she felt so passionate about climate change that she put in the work to develop her reading and writing skills so that she could make impactful speeches. I originally was going to do this blog on effective teaching strategies to teach reading based on outside resources. However, that was really boring me and I don't know why anyone would want to read it when there are 100000 other blogs discussing that. If you're interested in some basic strategies you can read "A Guide to Effective Literacy Instruction". I'd rather discuss important matters than regurgitate information.

Citation

https://www.oecd.org/els/family/CO_3_4_Literacy_scores_gender_age_15.pdf

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

ALL IMAGES USED WERE LABELED FOR REUSE

Media Literacy Blog

3 Resources (I have found for teaching the strand)

1. Brock Sakai: Media and Digital Literacy Tutorial (MODULE 2: IN THE CLASSROOM)

2. Mediasmarts.ca: Media Literacy Fundamentals

3. Common Sense Media: Commonsense.org: 4 Ways to Integrate Media Literacy in the Classroom

Brief Summary of Resources’

Brock Sakai: Media and Digital Literacy Tutorial (MODULE 2: IN THE CLASSROOM)

- Talks about the depiction of media literacy in the curriculum

- Gives examples of how to implement media literacy in the classroom

- Reviews the importance of media literacy in education

Mediasmarts.ca: Media Literacy Fundamentals

- Defines media literacy

- Defines media education

- Explains why you would teach media literacy

- Key concepts of media literacy

- How to integrate it in the classroom

- Summary of media literacy in the classroom

- Assessment of media literacy work (with a rubric)

- Canada and its media education

Common Sense Media: Commonsense.org: 4 Ways to Integrate Media Literacy in the Classroom

- Media literacy in-terms of social media
- 4 steps to implement media literacy in the classroom
- Media literacy in the classroom at every grade level

My Ideas for Classroom Applications

The resources that I have analyzed provide many ideas for classroom applications. However, I will first give my take on media literacy. Most people who know me are quick to ask me if something they see on their electronic device is legitimate or not. I have an interesting take on media literacy because I have been analyzing it for the last ten years. Ever since I saw the infamous house-hippo commercial when I was a kid I took everything I saw with a grain of salt. I started my technology journey when I was just ten-years-old. I remember learning everything about Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10. Seeing email evolve, the invention of social media on a global scale, and many more technology feats. Some would say I was a very observant kid. After watching all of this technological growth, I realized that I had unconsciously discovered many ways to spot false information just by looking at it. The tips I would give students on how to implement media literacy are:

Email:

1. Show an example of a fake email on the projector, computers, paper, etc. to all the students

2. Highlight or circle the spots on the email that prove its fake.

3. The email of the sender should end with @(the companies website)

4. Check for spelling and grammar mistakes in the content of the email. Most fake emails are sent from people who cannot write good English, or are auto-generated from AI (Artificial Intelligence).

5. Check if they state your full name in the email, most of the time fake emails are mass generated and don’t include your name

6. Check if they attached something for you to download, real emails will usually not want you to download any files. Especially ones that end in .exe, .zip, and .rar.

7. Most fake emails will ask you to sign in to an account (so they can steal your info), ask for your credit info, and/or ask you to download something. Real emails may ask these things, but usually only if you personally request the email. Sometimes I like to click on the link they give just to put fake information in and call the hackers out. I don't recommend that though...

8. If you click on the link they give to sign in to your account then check the URL in the top bar of your browser, 99% of the time if it’s fake it will have some weird domain name. An example would be: instead of the correct domain - facebook.com, the link will bring you to focebook, 1faacebook, etc. Basically just a misspelled version of the original link.

Social Media:

1. Students have to be media literate of the articles they see and the information their friends and others post.

2. Google can be your friend, anything you see on social media you can fact check by searching it on google and looking at a variety of responses. 9/10 times if people say it is not true, it is not.

3. Stop the problem before it happens, only follow/befriend people you know you can trust and only spread facts online.

4. Many AI are posting fake articles & propaganda that are artificially generated to sway your opinion on a subject. This is especially true with politics. You can use a lot of the tips I gave in the email segment but the biggest ones are spelling, and of course, googling information to fact check it.

Websites:

1. Check if the website is secure, you can tell at the top right of your browser just before the URL. There should be a locked lock, and when you click on it, it should say secure.

2. Make sure to click on the website’s URL and it should have https:// in front of it, not just Http://. I won't get into the details but https has recently in the last 2-3 years become a standard for legitimate websites.

3. Check if there is bad spelling and grammar on the website.

4. Check if there are a crazy amount of ads, especially popup ads and 18+ ads.

5. Check if the website ends with a weird domain, standard domains are .ca, .com, .org, and .net. Very secure domains are .edu, and .gov. Anything else may raise some red flags.

6. If you have any doubts, google has an engine to check if a website is safe Https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search

Classroom Applications from the Resources

The classroom applications that the resources give are:

Brock Sakai: Media and Digital Literacy Tutorial (MODULE 2: IN THE CLASSROOM)

1. Use critical thinking to find trustworthy sites
2. Focuses on websites
3. Define basic media literacy vocabulary
4. Try to identify biases in media
5. Use factual websites to solve a common goal
6. Use a chart to identify factual websites
7. Use a timer to keep students on track

(Thiessen, 2014).

Mediasmarts.ca: Media Literacy Fundamentals

1. “Exploit “teachable moments”
2. Give students a chance to create media, not just analyze it.
3. Start and end with the key concepts
4. Recognize that kids – and adults – enjoy media
5. Teach about media, not just with media
6. Make media education about asking questions, not learning answers
7. Fight the perception that “It doesn’t matter”
8. Assess and evaluate media literacy work
9. Let students bring their own media to the table
10. Keep up-to-date with media trends and developments”

(Media Literacy Fundamentals, 2017).

Common Sense Media: Commonsense.org: 4 Ways to Integrate Media Literacy in the Classroom

1. Imagine the profile of a media-literate student.
2. Use media literacy to reinforce your existing teaching objectives.
3. Work backward from your most sophisticated media-infused teaching plans.
4. As pockets of media-literacy practices build in your school, look to align them vertically.

Connections to Curriculum

Four expectations of the media literacy strand and how my information and the resources correlate:

Students will:

1. demonstrate an understanding of a variety of media texts;

Me:
I incorporate the understanding of websites, social media, and email literacy. Relating them to understanding credibility.

Resources:
Incorporates critical thinking and a deep understanding of media literacy but less specific parts of it.

2. identify some media forms and explain how the conventions and techniques associated with them are used to create meaning;

3. create a variety of media texts for different purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques;

4. reflect on and identify their strengths, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful in understanding and creating media texts.

(Ontario 2006)

Citations

Jennifer Thiessen. “Using Critical Thinking To Find Trustworthy Websites Rebrand 2014” Online video clip. YouTube. Jan 26, 2016. Web. Sept 28, 2019.

“Media Literacy Fundamentals.” MediaSmarts, 19 Jan. 2017, mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/general-information/digital-media-literacy-fundamentals/media-literacy-fundamentals#tips.

Sakai. (2019). EDBE 8P24. Module 2: Media and Digital Literacy Tutorial. Retrieved from https://lms.brocku.ca/portal/site/Media_Info_Literacy_Modules/tool/635b13a4-0e72-4544-8fc2-534671782ed7?null

Ontario (2006). Language. The Ontario Curriculum: Grades 1-8. Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/ language18currb.pdf